Game is becoming less diversive and unfun

So after playing this league for 2 Weeks here my 2 Cents of the current state of the game.

I Once enjoyed poe for its diversity and accessability (cheesing endgame with omega tanky builds), but not going meta is too punishing atm.
Tried so many Builds already this league.
Currently playing a 17k Es str/int stacking coc cospri build with ofc grace/determination/defiance banner/purity. Did everything with it last league, the feared, maven, sirus, everything the game to offer and being able to facetank most non telegraphed stuff. But things like Thiefs torment or drought bringer, just disabling flasks (Coruscating Elixir) on hit is so punishing, that i dont wanna map with it anymore and purely keeping it for bossing. Every random mob, can have chaos dmg now, so that build feels bad now. Also AN is more dangerous then any endgame content besides uber uber stuff is just stupid and bad design.

The fact that basically everyone is running determination/defiance banner and aegis aurora being the 2nd most used item in softcore just shows how bad our defense option are currently are. WE got stripped away of so many decent options, that everyone has to use grace/determination to even start mapping.

We once had, Fortify, Mom, Dodge, Evasion, Armor, Blind, Block, freeze, reduction through conversion and other stuff.
They stripped most of them slowly away. Saying block capped now refers to Glancing blows 90% of the time, while true block is barely used, cuz they made it harder to get it, for example through changing positions on notes for red nightmare, Gladiator and all that.
Dodge is completly gone, Blind is useless, MoM is useless, cuz Auras are much more efficient, everything got freeze immune, everything got stun immune, Evasions entropy system is gonna kill ya aswell, while before stacking dodge and evasion actually felt good, but was still punishing against phys spells for example, which felt much more balanced. We got pseudo choices now.

So now we got that homogeneous feel of defense, were everyone goes grace/determination/defiance banner with aegis aurora and glancing, while also slapping spell suppression on top of it or some variation. Also we slap melding of the flesh on top of it and call it a day. Cuz no other defense is actually working anymore.

All this limits the builds we can play cuz we invest soo much into defense to not die every 2nd map to some bullshit. And even after investing so much into defense, there will be some kind of degen, which still gonna get ya, so whatever we doing its not enough to feel like actually gods anymore.

AN just made this already bad system worse. Now also heavily punishing slower Tankier builds, cuz some volatile-like bomb is chasing ya around, or u get trapped in some ice prison EVERY SECOND. Or its just bypassing some of ya phys reduction.

Each league I Try to build the most tanky char possible, but now with mavens game and other instant death mechanic, like drowning, i dont see the point anymore doing those instead of some 1.000.000.000 dmg cast on death discharge build. And they getting more and more common. So the best boss killers are now actually not which can survive and do their mechanics, but the ones who 1 shot them. I guess it was always the case, but atleast u were rewarded for going tanky, now u fail 1 mechanic and u are dead. If it would deal any dmg, u might be able to mitigate it, but nope. Current Endgame feels more like the Endgame of MMO's

AN kinda resonates with it, u either have 10mio dmg or u gonna have a bad time. Monster have something between 5k and 100mio life in red maps. Especially ele builds can feel pretty bad if u not using all the ways the game has to offer to bypass resists. And i feel we taking a few steps back again, were ele builds all felt bad, cuz monster just had too high resistance and we had not enough tools to bypass them. The now gone Immunities just making it even worse. The huge discrepancy in monster life is interrupting the game flow and punishing builds more which rely on hits, then the one's relying on dots. So u zoom 2 screens, just to fight 1 mob for 1 minute, then zoom again 2 screens and stop again to fight that triple resist buffed ultra hp mob, which at the end drops nothing and is just there to punish ya build and you, cuz ya OCD forces ya to kill it.

Oh yeah and forcing any non-meta build behind Omni, cuz its the only way to make them deal dmg, while also being Tanky, kinda sucks aswell, when it costs 45ex.

Sentinel is actually quite fun and would be enough challenging without AN on top of it.

GGG please stop balancing the game around the top 0,1% of broken builds, which stack everything defense and offensive. Let player cheese content if they like, and give HC fans a 2nd atlas with premade mods, which makes it more challenging for them, if u want to stretch playtime and bosskill events, but let us average player please enjoy the game. I know u dont like the concept of 2 different SC/HC league, but making it harder with some mods for hc players shouldnt take much of ya dev time.

Probably gonna leave the league after this weekend, so I hope next one is good again and i would actually like to experiment with builds again and not feel forced to choose the most tanky build which also got okay dmg to play the game.

Yeah i'd fully agree with that post, I'm finished with Path of Exile. I don't understand the design decisions, it requires too much time investment, i hate trading, its just not for me.

I have never ever wanted to trade or play MP in an ARPG since Diablo 1. I actually want to play the game, I want to find the items, craft the items and equip them to increase power and complete the game. This game forces an awful trade economy on you that isn't fun for solo play unless your unemployed/streamer and grind 14 hours every day for 3 months. I don't find buying items in trade fun or rewarding.

All rewarding mechanics focus on speed / zoom / meta build gameplay, so you rule out the strongest potential feature of the game (build diversity and experimentation). You feel penalized quickly if you selected the wrong starter skill.

I also don't really get why they are all in on making an ARPG an balanced e-sport instead of fun game, do the bulk of players see POE as a competitive game?

I'd have to fully agree. I'm a casual player and I tried out the end of Nemesis league and wow, I had a lot of fun after not playing for over 2 years. I was EXTREMELY excited to try out 3.18 but got really upset when my first death was in mudflats to a bird. Day one was nasty. Then they nerfed. Nerfed. More Nerfs. Even more nerfs.

If you have to nerf something that many times, it had no business being in the game in the first place, and on top of that it should be removed entirely, but it's almost like they purposefully want to kill the game, to me.